Wired's Clive Thompson posted a column yesterday about the difficulty of actually finishing games these days. He's dead-on in many ways. I have fond memories of playing RPGs for 10 hours at a stretch in college. In one semester alone, I powered through Final Fantasy III/6, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, and Chrono Trigger. I estimated that I spent about 125 hours on those games, all told.
Now? I don't remember the last time I finished a game. Well, sure, I finished Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and New Super Mario Bros., both of which took six hours or less. Maybe it's not a coincidence that I rated them so highly: I was able to have the full experience. Before that? Shadow of the Colossus, maybe (10 hours). And before that, Resident Evil 4 (~20 hours). They were good enough to keep me playing to the end, but still short enough that doing so didn't require sacrifices on my part. A game like Oblivion, on the other hand, is practically impossible to enjoy if you're working a full-time job and have a reasonably active social life. Hell, Oblivion practically is a job. And this isn't to impugn the people who are able to make time for longer games, obviously -- I would if I could. Just interesting to note that I'm no longer in the target demographic.
I'm going to finish Okami, though. You'd better believe that.
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